LOS ANGELES, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- To explore ways that the world's two leading film industries could work more closely together to meet the challenges and seize the opportunities in the post-pandemic era, industry executives, creatives and officials from China and the United States met virtually at a high-profile co-production summit on Monday.
The event was a precursor to the annual Chinese American Film Festival and Chinese American TV Festival, which will return to Los Angeles as a live, in-person event later this week. Broadcast live from their spacious studio in Los Angeles County, the organizing committee of the 17th Chinese American Film Festival and Chinese American TV Festival hosted the summit to heat up communication between the U.S. and Chinese film and television communities, which suffered a serious setback during the COVID-19 pandemic.
"To secure a prosperous future, we must continue to collaborate and cooperate. There is so much we can accomplish when we work together," said U.S. Congresswoman Judy Chu in her video message.
Zhang Ping, Chinese Consul General in Los Angeles, pointed out in his video message that China's strict COVID-19 prevention and control measures enabled China to reopen their cinemas soon. In 2020, for the first time ever, China ended the year as the world's biggest movie market with 20.4 billion yuan (around 3.1 billion U.S. dollars), surpassing North America's 2.2 billion dollars.
Although China and the United States are facing challenges, Zhang said, from "unprecedented difficult relations," there is still huge opportunities to work together in the future in "a win-win, mutually beneficial way." He urged "film and television industries play active roles in the cooperation between our two countries."
Adam Presser, executive vice president of WarnerMedia International and head of WarnerMedia China, Australia and New Zealand, advised producers to consider a co-production to "make sure there is a story to be told that both audiences will enjoy."
He pointed out that the precondition for any co-production is the willingness of both countries to undertake them and "to find a good partner to openly discuss all these issues with as friends."
China is one of the biggest overseas markets for Warner Bros.' movies and a growing market for Hollywood in recent years. For example, Warner Bros.' 2021 blockbuster "Godzilla vs. Kong" grossed 100.5 million dollars in North America while taking in 1.23 billion yuan (around 192.1 million dollars) in China.
"We are planning numerous Chinese-language productions in China," Presser told Xinhua.
Andre Morgan, producer of the Academy Award-winning hit "Million Dollar Baby" and an industry trendsetter who has been making films in China since the 1970s, praised the Chinese for showing the world "a clear path back to financial success" for the global film industry, despite the COVID-19 pandemic that "the U.S. is still struggling with."
He contends it is primarily Netflix, Amazon and Apple who are calling the shots in Hollywood now, with the studios following their lead. "It's a change in emphasis in how the American public is consuming content."
He sees this as an escalating problem for theater owners. "There will be a shortage of filmed content that can be seen in theaters first, because they will have already shown it on Netflix."
But that could present an opportunity for imported Chinese films to step into the void. "The opportunity for China to export content has never been better," he contends.
Bob Underwood, of Writers Guild of America's Foreign Employment Task Force, pointed out that "not many Americans have been to China. But if they can't spend a month with a Chinese family in China, they can spend two hours with them in a film and find common ground."
Academy and Emmy Award winner, producer and director, Richard L. Anderson, pointed out that while U.S. audiences are now more willing to read subtitles, a way to lower the barrier to entry for Chinese language films into the U.S. market might come from dubbing Chinese films and TV shows into English using an exciting new AI graphics program he likes, called Flawless Neural Network, that morphs the actor's lips to match the English words, so they are not frustratingly out of sync.
"It's important to understand that we are all the same underneath," he said. "And the more American audiences see Chinese films, the more comfortable they will be." Enditem
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